…there you are.
Let’s say you fall off a balcony and break your leg. When this happened, you were wearing a red shirt. Would you say “Red shirts cause broken legs?”
That’s an obvious example. Here’s a less obvious one: You got a cell phone as a pre-teen. As an adult, you have an eating disorder. Did the cell phone cause you to have an eating disorder?
Simple narratives are appealing, but in the absence of a counter-factual, they don’t mean anything. Even if you can add details like, “I always watched videos of super-skinny models!” I believe you – but did watching those give you an eating disorder, or did you already feel uncomfortable in your body and so you gravitated to videos like that?
The world is complex. Don’t try to solve the simple version. Work on the complex but meaningful solutions.
The Opportunity Machine 